Kalaupapa Month

It was in 2021 when a bill was signed into law designating the month of January of each year in Hawaiʻi as “Kalaupapa Month.”
At the Hawaiʻi State Capitol, one of three statues of Saint Damien stands as a reminder of not just his significance in Hawaiʻi’s history, but of the painful past our people had to endure.
Believed to have been introduce to the Hawaiian Islands in the 1830s, leprosy began to spread amongst Hawaiʻi’s people.
On January 6, 1866, the first twelve patients believe to have contracted it were sent to Kalaupapa on Molokaʻi as an act was passed which “isolated and confined all leprous patients who shall be deemed capable of spreading the disease of leprosy.”
Because the government provided very little support, the original inhabitants of Kalauapapa had extended their help.
But because of overcrowding, the government ordered the original inhabitants to leave, evicting those who remained in January of 1895.
Two months after his arrival in Hawaiʻi, Belgium man Jozef Damien de Veuster was ordained as a priest in Downtown Honolulu at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Peace.
Becoming known as Father Damien, he set off to Kalaupapa in 1873 where he would spend the next sixteen years of his life as a religious leader but also as a friend and advocate for its leprosy patients.
From cleaning patients and addressing their wounds, to providing sacraments and anointings, to building churches and homes, Father Damien was considered a blessing to Molokaʻi for his selflessness.
He even chose to remain in the colony permanently.
After succumbing to leprosy himself, he died from the disease at the age of 49.
He was buried in Kalawao until 1936 when his remains were exhumed and reburied in Belgium.
A relic of the remains of his right hand was then returned to Molokaʻi and laid to rest in his original grave in 1995.
Father Damien was canonized and elevated to Sainthood as Saint Damien in 2009.
Did you know? Now you do!